What if skin color had different genetic coding?

From a genetic perspective, human skin color is very, very complicated, but is usually partially dominant, so if people with two different skin colors have children, the children will have a skin color somewhere in between the skin colors of their parents. (black mom + white dad = three mulatto children.)

But what if the genes were different, so that a black mother and a white father might have, say, two white kids, and one black kid?

Or what if the genes were codominant, so that a black mother and a white father's children would have patterns of black and white skin?

What would the effect on society be from this sort of change?

Would be harder to use skin color to mean anything. But I doubt it would eliminate racism (barring the fact the butterflies have a chance to be so huge as to eliminate it just by things working out differently) since the idea of whites and blacks having children as acceptable requires the idea that it doesn't matter if they turn out to have zebra stripped skin or not, not zebra stripes vs. ebony or some other possibility.

If "blacks" are still seen as inferior, someone will find a way that this is irrelevant. If not, people will look different, but that's about it.

Cow babies!

Thats not what codominance means - "skin colour" genes are codominant right now.

KyleB said:

From a genetic perspective, human skin color is very, very complicated, but is usually partially dominant, so if people with two different skin colors have children, the children will have a skin color somewhere in between the skin colors of their parents. (black mom + white dad = three mulatto children.)

But what if the genes were different, so that a black mother and a white father might have, say, two white kids, and one black kid?

Or what if the genes were codominant, so that a black mother and a white father's children would have patterns of black and white skin?

What would the effect on society be from this sort of change?

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I do not think you understand how it actually works.

Firstly, not sure if that's possible, secondly there is more to race than just skin color, so I'd doubt it'd eliminate racism.

it's all rather brain-exploding, but to the limited extent I understand it the genes controlling skin colour exhibit incomplete dominance, the result of which if a darker-skinned and a lighter-skinned person mate is children that are always in between. They must be lighter-skinned than the dark-skinned parent and darker-skinned than the light-skinned parent, no other result is possible.

However if children of two such pairings mate all bets are off: a child could inherit the lighter-skin alleles from both parents and be lighter than either, the darker-skin and be darker than either, or a mix and be much the same. With incomplete dominance that appears to be the only genetic way to get children of strongly different colours to each other, though note that only the mixed-alleles would favour either parent in that respect.

Complete dominance could also lead to such results down the line, as recessive genes in both parents combine in a child to produce one of markedly different colour to either, and to siblings who received a dominant-recessive pairing or two of the same dominant. But I don't think there is a mechanism to produce the exact result specified of dark-skinned and light-skinned parents with no previous admixture producing a couple of kids of the one colour and a couple more of the other. And while the stripes might be very handsome I don't believe it could work that way; you would need specific genes evolved to produce different pigmentation in different areas of skin. Absent that you would always have a uniform colour, whether a blend or one colour or another.

Such at any rate is my limited understanding, derived from reading around on this interesting question. I put it out more to see if it's shot down than for any other reason. The only time I ever thought about the question before was to muse on what would happen if all gay people were born with blue skin. Pro: dating much easier, full minority recognition and rights much sooner. Con: 99.999% infanticide rate in most societies, most eras. I guess the con outweighs the two pros.

KyleB said:

Or what if the genes were codominant, so that a black mother and a white father's children would have patterns of black and white skin?

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"Cow" ends up used as a racist term for mixed-race black and white people.

Finn said:

Firstly, not sure if that's possible, secondly there is more to race than just skin color, so I'd doubt it'd eliminate racism.

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But remember in America race is like 90% skin color (and to a more limited extent phenotype) but most places it's a lot more than that.

I'd assume on option one (Babies are born "white" or born "black", not some shade of brown) it just makes racism that much easier: "first kid's a white, set her aside for proper society, kid two's black, send him to the slave pens". That would nicely reinforce the idea of race as a set "act of god".

"Cow" kids...that'd pretty much reinforce the stigma of miscegenation.

Either way I think it makes things worse for race relations.

MNP said:

But remember in America race is like 90% skin color (and to a more limited extent phenotype) but most places it's a lot more than that.

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But the problem with that is that America won't exist with a POD this far back. No OTL country will.

Geekhis Khan said:

I'd assume on option one (Babies are born "white" or born "black", not some shade of brown) it just makes racism that much easier: "first kid's a white, set her aside for proper society, kid two's black, send him to the slave pens". That would nicely reinforce the idea of race as a set "act of god".

"Cow" kids...that'd pretty much reinforce the stigma of miscegenation.

Either way I think it makes things worse for race relations.

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You can get kids where one looks black and the other white in the real world. I believe there was a couple in Britain who had two sets of twins like that.

Beedok said:

You can get kids where one looks black and the other white in the real world. I believe there was a couple in Britain who had two sets of twins like that.

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Yes, but the OP suggests an always "All White" or "All Black" in All Cases...that's quite different than OTL where occasionally one kid can "pass" and the other can't. ITTL that total white/black dichotomy would just reinforce the stupid notion of blacks and whites as "totally different beings" where OTL's tendency towards "Browning" makes the children obviously a mix rather than something easy to label one way or the other.

Beedok said:

Cow babies!

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Calves, they are called calves. And I think that might have a little more to do with their hair than skin.

Domenic said:

And while the stripes might be very handsome I don't believe it could work that way; you would need specific genes evolved to produce different pigmentation in different areas of skin. Absent that you would always have a uniform colour, whether a blend or one colour or another.

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If skin color genes somehow get moved onto the X chromosome, you could have women with patches of different colored skin, just as female cats can have tortoiseshell patterns due to X inactivation. It would be exceedingly rare in humans since multiple genes code for skin color and you would need some or all of them to move onto an X chromosome.

Finn said:

But the problem with that is that America won't exist with a POD this far back. No OTL country will.

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Obviously! But I'm saying the OP appears to be bringing an American perspective on things.

I always wanted to see spotted people when I was little.
Horses can do it, why can't we?

MNP said:

Obviously! But I'm saying the OP appears to be bringing an American perspective on things.

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That's quite clear, which is why I posted in the first place: to refute his viewpoint as simplistic. No problem.

I doubt that it would reinforce racism based on color, actually. You wouldn't be able to tell the origin of someone by their skin color, it would be a matter of luck. African legionaires in Roman Britain would leave behind their genes, they would later manifest as the occasional dark-skinned child. Instead of a racial continuum around the world, you would see light-skinned and dark-skinned people mixed together at various ratios throughout the world.

This means that, to some extent, dark-skinned people would have a larger presence in Europe. Skin color would likely be treated as akin to hair or eye color.

This would not eliminate racism at all. Facial features and other characteristics would more than likely fill the gap.

I fear we would have found other reasons for finding some people other an inferior